


Beyond the Grave

by Eisengrave, selwyn



Series: Gifts from the Divine [HashiMada RP Collection] [4]
Category: Naruto
Genre: M/M, Really sad shit, madara stop being a bitch for like 2 seconds, sad hashi breaks my heart, suicide sort of attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-24 20:34:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30077970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eisengrave/pseuds/Eisengrave, https://archiveofourown.org/users/selwyn/pseuds/selwyn
Summary: Hashirama couldn't think of any other way to continue. Maybe this time, he could join Madara instead.[lil thing about Hashirama's mysterious death which we never got an answer to, also Edo Tennsei Madara]
Relationships: Senju Hashirama/Uchiha Madara
Series: Gifts from the Divine [HashiMada RP Collection] [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2211912
Comments: 2
Kudos: 25
Collections: ShiIta is Love✨HashiMada is Life





	Beyond the Grave

Wind blew across the vast steppe borderland between Stone and Fire, blowing hot ash and dust over the field of corpses there. The stink of blood and offal hung over the battlefield as carrion flies buzzed over rotting flesh, gorging themselves. The battle yesterday had swung in Suna’s favor; there were more Fire country shinobi dead on that field than any of theirs. The alliance between Iwa and Suna aimed to crush Konoha between their two-pronged attack, with Kiri always prowling behind any massacre.

Hundreds were dead. It was the most brutal killing field they’d ever known.

“Konohagakure’s army has been routed,” reported Daichi. He lowered his spyglass. “But the sensors tell me there’s someone else still out there.”

“It’s their Hokage,” Reto said. His mask was up to cover his mouth and nose from the whipping sand. He watched the horizon, his face protected from the harsh Rock country sun by his Kazekage hat. It was good for something, at least. “Senju Hashirama.”

“Damn. Him?” Daichi’s hand clenched. “It’ll be a bloodbath.”

“He’s alone,” Reto replied. “He’s tired. His men are dead. No matter what he’s called, he still bleeds. What bleeds… dies.”

Their eyes met. If there was a time to move, this was it. Strike the iron while it was hot and smash the Senju down for good – there was no better hour than now. The Shukaku was nearly ready for deployment and Iwagakure promised sealing support to pull down the Hokage’s Mokuton. Even if they had to lose a thousand men to do it, it’d all be worth it for the Senju’s head.

“I’ll find Tsuchikage-sama then,” Daichi said with a short bow. “Anything else?”

“No, go ahead,” Reto waved him off. The Iwa-nin left and he returned his attention to the horizon. To the Senju.

Time to see if even gods bled. They assembled at sunset when the whole sky became violent and the horizon was an angry flaming stripe.

It was a hard battle. Exhaustion pulled Reto apart at the seams as he looked down at the battlefield from one of the Tsuchikage’s bee summons. The giant wood golem of the Senju’s, made famous for smashing down Uchiha Madara’s Susano’o, was anchored to the earth by titanic fuuinjutsu chains. The wood creaked, the chains struggling, but they held fast. The Shukaku screamed as it devastated the ragged remnants of Konohagakure’s forces, its sand flensing flesh from bone.

At long last. They had him. Countless bodies and thousands of plans later, the Shodaime Hokage was pinned. The man was on his knees, a tiny red pinprick in the center of a crater. Reto nudged his bee and it buzzed down to a landing.

Up close, he marveled at the Hokage. He’d thrown seven spears into him and all seven had passed through his back and into the earth. His spine, his ribs, his organs, they all had to have been utterly destroyed. But the Senju kept breathing even as blood cascaded from his ravaged chest. His shoulders still held firm despite the black chains pulling his arms apart, his hands rendered useless by more seals.

Reto raised his hand and summoned another spear. There’d be no gloating on his part here. He’d put this through the Senju’s head and it’d all be over. A man like him deserved that much honor. And then, Sunagakure would take its place as one of the premier villages. No more starvation. No more fear.

It all ended here.

He pulled his arm back to throw, distantly registering a sudden swell of voices –

– and felt a flash of hot pain before it all went black.

The Shodaime Kazekage’s head rolled off his shoulders and hit the ground.

“When Tobirama told me that you were going to do something foolish,” rumbled a dark voice from behind the still-standing body of the Kazekage, “I didn’t think it’d be this stupid.”

Madara kicked the body and it fell forward, the spear rolling out of its lax hands, and he stepped in its place, stabbing his borrowed sword into the ground. His face was expressionless, his mouth pulled flat – he looked like he was discussing the fish market instead.

Silence reigned through the field, everyone shocked dumb. Madara continued to have eyes only for Hashirama. His lip curled delicately as he tossed his head.

“Giving up?” One of his cheeks flaked and cracked. “How ugly.”

_ Even now, you haunt me. _

Hashirama hadn’t watched the face of his to-be killer. He’d stared at the ground, waiting, waiting to finally be released from the hell he’d imposed upon himself five years ago. A lifetime ago. An eternity ago.

The blade should have pierced his heart too. He had become a man who would sacrifice anything for his ideals, for his obsessions. That was the lesson Madara had wished to teach him, and taught him he had.

The price paid for Hashirama’s open eyes had been too great. Not even gods could endure the loss of half of their soul. 

So Hashirama had come here. To prevent what was bound to be a war on a scale unprecedented. A war on a scale that he and his village system had made possible.

Madara had been right. And Hashirama killed him for it.

Two armies it took to bring him down, a third waiting in the wings. Seals, chains, unending numbers…Iwa and Suna threw themselves at him. Threw endless lives into his path, to be crushed, nothing but fodder. The disregard for human life had not changed at all. No amount of assurance about the progress of this world could conceal that truth from Hashirama’s eyes.

He killed. He destroyed. He tore apart a tailed beast . He ended entire bloodlines, bereft families of ever being whole again. He killed brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers…

And he was so, so tired of it. 

When they’d finally gotten close enough to chain his golem, he let them. When they sealed his arms, he only killed half of their number. When his would-be killer came to finish him off, Hashirama had been ready to go. Ready to finally leave his mistakes, grand unfixable mistakes, behind. 

And then, a dull thump, and that voice.

“Come to greet me, have you?” 

“I thought I’d see what happened to the world while I was gone.” Madara approached Hashirama slowly, his face intense. Locked on, one of his cousins used to call it. Like a hawk. He eyed the spears inside him and the seals that held his arms fast. 

“It feels good to know I was right.” Madara circled around him and paused at his back. When he experimentally tugged on one of the spears, he found that it held fast. Judging by the amount of blood that Hashirama lost, he should’ve been dead ten times over.

“Your healing always got you out of a pinch,” he remarked, touching his shoulder. He was warm. Alive. Madara let his touch linger before he pulled away.

“So what happened now?” he asked as he came back into view again. He looked down at him, still sneering. Despite his mild tone, anger smoldered in his dark eyes. He grabbed his hair and used it to lift his head up. “Where is your strength?”

The apparition had Madara’s strength, but none of his fire. It was much the opposite, as cold as the ground Hashirama was kneeling on.

He could feel his body refusing to die, despite the sheer amount of damage, the blood he’d lost, the insides that had been destroyed. He was terribly lucky that the spears had missed his heart. Then, his death wouldn’t be so slow and arduous.

His face was pulled up, but nothing could force him to look upon the one he’d taken from the world, the beloved and vengeful eyes of a friend, his heart, his loss.

Madara’s spirit was cruel to taunt him like this, to question and defy him even as he prepared to join him for good.

“I’ve changed, Madara.” I _ ’m tired. I want it to end. I’m tired of fighting without you beside me. I can’t change the world alone, after all.  _

“I know that,” he scoffed. “I knew the moment you stabbed me in the back.”

He let him go. Madara looked back at the shinobi who were beginning to draw closer, their shock wearing off as the seconds passed by. There was no time for a conversation here and Madara was in no mood to fight when he couldn’t even enjoy it.

No reason to draw this out any longer than necessary then.

He turned his back to Hashirama and made the Ram seal. This was the first time ever that Hashirama stood on this side of his Susano’o, Madara reflected as his hair began to lift from his shoulders. Blue fire roared to life, sweeping away the front lines of the nearest shinobi with the force of their awakening.

The ghostly flames began to chew on the black chain seals binding Hashirama. Madara stood in the center of it, his face disgusted as he looked at the joined armies of two villages.

“You little copy-cats,” he snarled, raising his hand, “– begone!”

The first of Susano’o’s swords came crashing down, ripping a gash into the earth. The second followed, destroying rock and flesh alike. Screams echoed through the murky air as the last red sliver of sun disappeared behind the mountains.

Carnage reigned beyond the blue that obscured Hashirama’s blurry vision. It really didn’t matter who this was, or why it - he - sounded like Madara, wore Madara’s face, wielded his chakra.

He was delirious with blood loss. Hashirama was a healer - but even he had limits. And right now, he was at his limits, pushed too far by his own negligence and the persistence of the enemies. The very same enemies that would be vanquished by the ghost of Madara. How…terribly fitting that it would be him, he who had been slain by Hashirama’s own hand, who would come to protect him at his final hour.

It was ironic that Madara’s presence, even now, produced the notion of safety in Hashirama, when it should have long ago become something else.

When the chains snapped off of his arms, he toppled to the side like a speared boar, motionless, a crumpled heap of flesh and bone. 

Even if he’d had the will to try and remove the rods, his sealed arms were useless, now sprawled across the ground.

The blue chakra still raged all around him. Maybe he could go like this. With the illusion of Madara safeguarding his passage. It was a nice thought.

He heard the chains rattling. So Hashirama must’ve gotten them off. Madara glanced back at him, his expression begrudging. He scowled at what he saw instead,

Who was this weak man lying on the ground like someone’s dropped toy? He didn’t remember Hashirama like that. He should’ve been up by now, pulling those spears out, healing himself, taking control of his Mokuton… not this broken ghost of himself. Anger hissed inside him.

His Susano’o continued to wreak havoc as Madara returned to Hashirama’s side. He prodded him with his foot.

“What are you doing?” he demanded. When Hashirama didn’t respond, Madara kicked him in the stomach. Blood gushed out as the spears were jostled. “Heal yourself. Get up. Move.”

Even if he wanted to, Hashirama wouldn’t have done what Madara’s ghost demanded. 

There was no sense in it now. He could feel his chakra, draining away, sinking back into the earth along with his blood. Returning to where it came from. Hashirama was grateful to have held it in his grasp for as long as he did. But now, he was finished.

The kick jostled his body, but he’d gone numb from pain a long time ago. Possibly when the spears had run him through entirely. Hashirama’s pain threshold had always been high. He could survive these injuries. But he didn’t want to.

He’d come here to stop a war, and die. In that order. And everything was still going to plan.

Bitter, coppery blood filled his mouth. Hashirama let it drip from parted lips. 

“This time, I’ll go with you.” 

He promised the vengeful apparition. 

Madara’s eyes narrowed.

_ You will save him. You will tell him that you forgive him, that you love him. That you want him to live, despite everything. _

He shook his head, annoyed by the linger command still inside him. It’d weakened over time and distance but the compulsion was there, laden with Tobirama’s intent, to sweep Hashirama up and tell him that he’d done no wrong and that Madara was here to absolve him of his guilt.

For a moment, he imagined himself pulling out one of those spears and just finishing the job. Hashirama wasn’t going to offer a fight. It’d be easy to stab it through his skull, push it through his brain, push and push until it emerged the other side covered in blood and bone and grey matter. His handsome face would be obliterated. All that strength amounting to nothing.

Violence clawed up his throat like thorns. Madara had no heart in this body, could feel no pain in this body, and yet his chest felt constricted with tight, pulling, sucking emotions. Anger, always the ever-present anger, but other things too. Betrayal. Disgust. Revulsion.

Pity. Sorrow.

Pain.

“Do you think that’s what I want?” he asked him. “Is this what I deserve from you? This pathetic death?”

Madara grabbed one of the spears and pulled it. It ripped free with a sucking noise, blood smeared all over it. Madara threw it away without looking. Outside the Susano’o, a war raged. Inside it, the noise was distorted and muffled. It made Madara’s voice seem louder, echoing around them.

“You won’t go with me anywhere,” he told him. He pulled another spear out and threw that one away too. “Where I go, you can’t follow.”

He wrapped his hands around a third. Madara used this one to drag Hashirama closer until only inches separated them, so close that it looked like an embrace. Blood oozed down the shaft and stained his palms. “What do you think I am?” he murmured to him. “A ghost? A demon? Some last hallucination of your dying mind?”

Madara leaned closer until his mouth brushed Hashirama’s ear. “Maybe I’m your last chance at repentance.”

Every spear left behind a bloody, ragged hole. Each one would have killed a lesser man. It wasn’t Hashirama’s own will that would propel his flesh to do what it always did; knit itself back together. No matter what tore him apart. 

Hashirama could still hear his voice, could feel the presence of him right there, holding blood-drenched metal. Whispering, mocking him, fueling a spite that Hashirama couldn’t feel.

He’d made that mistake once, and lost everything for it. Everything he held dear, everything he’d promised to be.

Just a few more spears remained in Hashirama’s body, which had been forcibly dragged back up into a kneeling position by Madara’s motions. A spear that had pierced his abdomen and back would be next, judging by Madara’s grasp.

Hashirama’s hand, burned, blackened by sealing ink came up to deny him the removal of this one. 

It didn’t matter if Madara was real or not, illusion or imagination; he could hear these words. He could speak. 

“I cannot repent for what I’ve done. You…you know that. I killed you. I became…just like him in the end. I couldn’t even change myself. I was a fool to believe I could change the world.”

The seals fought him. Madara fought them back. No matter how strong they were, no matter how clever their creators were, very few things in this world didn’t fold to pure force. His chakra burned down his arms – a volcanic white heat that seared away the ink and cauterized the hole just as Madara pulled out the spear.

“All I hear is self-pity from a man who doesn’t deserve my respect,” Madara said. “This is what you’ve become in my absence? No wonder Tobirama was so desperate.”

Half of him delighted in his agony. He deserved it, he deserved all of it – this was the world finally swinging in his direction after years of starvation. This was fate punishing Hashirama for his mistakes. Finally, finally, he felt an ounce of the maddening despair that’d consumed Madara, the hopelessness, the agony, the fear, all that fear.

But the other half of him wept. Despaired. Because he still loved him, despite everything, because this was Hashirama and he was Madara and he’d always known they would end up together again and again.

There were three more to go. Madara pulled two out at once and dropped at his feet. When Hashirama threatened to collapse, he caught him. He wrapped his fingers around the shaft of the final spear.

“You’ve always been a fool,” he said. He began to pull it out. This one took slower, grinding past bone, dragging out torn shreds of organ, and Madara bent closer until they shared one breath. “That was what I liked about you.”

Blood sprayed as he ripped out the spear. Madara didn’t throw away this one. Instead, he used it to steady himself as he dragged them both upright. Hashirama bled freely over him but Madara hefted him easily.

He looked uncaringly at the battlefield. There, in the distance, came Shukaku lumbering over. Madara considered taming him, but it was the least of the tailed beasts – a waste of his time.

It was time to leave. He dropped the spear and grabbed Hashirama around the knees so he wasn’t dragging his feet. Susano’o dispelled just as Madara leaped over the heads of the two armies.

With every spear removed, Hashirama felt more blood spatter out of him. How much he had left at this point was anyone’s guess.

If it hadn’t been for Madara’s decisive pulling and supporting, Hashirama would have returned to the ground as an undignified, crumpled heap. Someone who had finally been flattened by the world after standing in defiance of it for so long.

When Madara left the gory field of battle behind, Hashirama was close to blacking out. He didn’t know why he still held on. Maybe to bask in the solid presence of his apparition for just a little longer.

What had Madara said? That Hashirama couldn’t follow where he went?

They’d see about that soon enough. If he could just stop being jostled, moved, carried…

There was no beat in Madara’s chest. No warmth came from his body, no scent. Even through the thick haze of his pain and the pungent stench of his own insides rising from his wounds, Hashirama found the absence of any smell from Madara the most compelling evidence; he wasn’t really here.

Maybe he was already dead, and this was how the afterlife would greet him. No painless immortality. He supposed it was fair; he didn’t deserve to pass away peacefully. He would suffer for his mistakes.

But if he was supposed to suffer, why was Madara protecting him? Caring for him?

“Why are you…here?”

_ Tell him you forgive him, that you love him. _

Madara shook his head. “I told you, didn’t I? I’m your last chance at repentance. Unless you don’t want forgiveness at all?”

The weary armies had no chance against him. Madra didn’t tire, didn’t rest, didn't hurt. He swept side anyone who got in his way and he left the battle behind without a look back. There were Konoha shinobi out there who were going to get slaughtered. Maybe even some of his clansmen. But he didn’t care for them. Not anymore. They’d denounced him first. An eye for an eye.

He dragged Hashirama’s hapless corpse away until the noise died down and the only sound around them was the whistling wind.

Once they were in the clear, Madara dropped him carelessly. Hashirama tumbled from his arms like a ragdoll. Some of his wounds were already closing up, but he’d been hurt badly. They would take time to heal. Could even scar.

“I could kill you, you know,” he said, looking down at him. “It’d be easy. Is that what you want, Hashirama? To die pretending you’re doing something good?”

Hashirama didn’t have the strength to face him now. He didn’t even have the strength to lift his head. 

He deserved this, didn’t he? Madara’s berating words. The pain unfolding even through the numbness of his body was excruciating, searing holes into his perception. He knew it was his regenerative ability, kicking into overdrive in order to keep him from death. He wished he could stop it. Was he going to live? Dismay gathered in the smudged darkness of his mind. Here had been an end, sweet and painful, and it was yanked away from him once more.

Madara’s words were empty. He never did have the heart to try and kill him.

“Are you going to talk me to death?” J _ ust do it. End it. Here and now. It should have been you anyway. _

“Killing you now would be a mercy,” Madara said. “And I think you deserve to suffer more for what you did.”

In the end, he went and built a fire for their makeshift camp. He didn’t need to eat and Hashirama looked too torn up to put anything in his stomach, so he didn’t bother to hunt. The blood dried to a flaky brown crust on him but he didn’t register discomfort anymore either.

“Well, Hashirama… you’re alive now. What will you do?”

He didn’t want to be.

Hashirama cursed his body’s innate healing ability at the rarest of times, but now was definitely one of those. Madara’s ghost mocked him, taunted him with his inability to just die.

That’s why he was here. Not to guide Hashirama, but to taunt him, to punish him for what he’d done.

He answered Madara’s question with one of his own.

“Why did you come to me now?”

“Your infernal brother pulled me out of my eternal sleep because he thought you were going to do something rash. Unfortunately, he was right for once.”

Madara sat down next to Hashirama. He ignored the smell of blood from him, ignored the constant buzz of his chakra as he slowly healed from his ordeal. His job here was done. By all rights, he’d be justified in abandoning Hashirama to his guilt.

But he wanted to savor it. He wanted to drink in the toxicity of his despair until the vengeance in him was finally sated. He wanted to see how even the greatest could fall to the poisons of his soul.

“What have you come to, Hashirama?” he mused darkly. He laid down until they were face to face. “Regret so soon? You flatter me.”

Tobirama did what?

Hashirama was in too much pain to be thinking clearly, but he did recall his brother’s proclivity to experiment with jutsu that had no business existing in their realm. Especially when it came to recalling and trapping the dead. He thought this would have found an end when he forbade Tobirama from summoning Madara’s little brother to his side.

Apparently not.

It pained him to know Tobirama was so desperate. Had he not made it clear that he would handle this himself? That he had no intention of returning to Konoha?

He couldn’t bear to look upon Madara’s cracked face and find the grin there.

“Does it please you?” Hashirama muttered, humoring the not-quite apparition, “Do you find delight in my pitiful state?”

“Bitterness does not suit you,” Madara told him. “No one but you brought this upon yourself.”

Their current position was a cold parody of how they used to be; the two lovers sharing one space, one breath, bodies curved towards one another like twin moons. Once upon a time, Madara used to reach out, smooth the worries away from Hashirama’s brow, and tell him to forget it all for now. But they no longer had that private world. Tethered to brutal reality, their bed was hard earth and Madara’s mouth was as cold as his skin.

“Are you going to try to kill yourself again? Will I never be able to rest, chained to this half-life to be your warden?”

Hashirama could do little to move. Bones knit, flesh rejoined, tissue grew anew rampantly. All of it was fairly painful, on par with sustaining his injuries in the first place, and it didn’t help that he didn’t want to heal up like this. That shinobi from Suna should have finished him off while he had the chance. Fool.

Madara’s touch would have broken the tender tether Hashirama had to reality right now; it was good that he was an arm’s distance away, cold, unreal. 

“I’ll make sure my brother does not summon you again.” 

“You want the easy way out.” Madara grabbed Hashirama’s chin and used it to shake him like he was a child. His skin was cool to the touch and clammy with blood. Madara wondered if that was because of how much blood he lost or his own dead fingers. Maybe both. Dead and dying, the two of them.

“Nothing is that easy. Didn’t killing me teach you that?”

He leaned on that the same way someone dug their thumb into an open wound.  _ You killed me. _ He liked the vicious energy in it. The power it had. He was forgotten, denounced, and shadowed, but he was right.

“You’ve made my death meaningless. That’s what you always do. Make promises and then stab me in the back.” 

“I am not the one who made an enemy out of you. You did that yourself, Madara.” As much as Hashirama regretted the extent of his actions, he still understood that it had been necessary. Nothing less would have put a halt to Madara’s rampaging madness. Yes, it was a terrible choice to kill his best friend, his heart’s other half…but what else could he have done?

A man could mourn the choice he’d made. A man could feel guilt for doing the right thing.

It always came down to such horrendous choices with Madara. All of their lives, that had never changed, and now, death was no different. If this was to be a bitter reunion, then Madara would not be the only one perpetrating such sour emotions.

“You gave me no other choice. I wanted it to be different, but you just push and push and push…I thought more of you, once. That you and I could always stand above hatred. Above names, clans, blood. That you and I were of one heart, one dream.” And he’d been proven so very wrong. 

“Did you? How disappointing I was then.” Madara sat up. Paper flakes drifted from his body like snow. “Unwilling to fall in line, too stubborn to yield – no wonder you preferred Tobirama. At least he comes to heel, right?”

He leaned in as he spoke, the shadows growing deeper on his face, his teeth bared and vicious. “Don’t be stupid. You needed me to push you.”

They’d spent more than ten years fighting each other. Ten years of competition, rivalry, of constantly pushing one another to be stronger, faster, more.

“I wanted it to be different?” Madara repeated mockingly. “Don’t lie to yourself. The only time you were at your best was with me. I made you better.”

“Is that how you saw me? Is that why you gave up on me?”

Madara’s words were bitter bile and Hashirama would have to swallow each drop if he ever wanted answers to the questions that had plagued him for years now. 

_ I made you better. _

Did that mean Madara had seen no way to fix any of what he believed to be wrong? 

The wound was old, had festered and never healed, and now it was wide open again. Hashirama never understood why he and Madara could not see eye to eye about the future of the village. Many things had become important enough to interfere with their relationship, their communication. More people had come to rely on Hashirama, trusted Hashirama, made him the man who made all the decisions. Between wrangling clans and politics, Hashirama had lost sight of Madara.

But rather than meeting him halfway, Madara had turned and sought his own ambitions elsewhere. Rather than trusting Hashirama’s faith, he’d found his own, elsewhere, and denounced their long years of work.

Madara did make him better. And worse. Madara spun an entire world around himself, and Hashirama never left that magnetic pull. When he’d ended Madara’s life, he’d found no freedom or clarity, only a deep, dark hole to crawl into. 

Maybe his answers would widen it further, but Hashirama needed to know the truth, now that he had this unforeseen chance.

“How did it go again? Our dream, the settlement we would build as brothers-in-arms?” Madara made it sound small and petty. He had a way of speaking that made everything come out like an insult. Hashirama used to be safe from that once. “That’s the key, isn’t it? Brothers-in-arms. But I have seen the way you treat your true brother.”

Jealousy was an ugly emotion on Madara. It brought out the worst in him. It was the face he wore in both life and death, a vulgarity that annihilated all the kindness he had.

“Who gave up on who first? You tell me you need me but you’re lying. You’ve been lying to me and you’ve been lying to yourself. This is the result.”

He looked at Hashirama’s wounds. They were all nearly closed up. His chakra reserves were dangerously low but that too would be rectified after food and rest. Hashirama always bounced back.

He turned back to the fire.

“I thought we were equals. You showed me otherwise.”

Closed up was an exaggeration. Hashirama’s skin might hold together, but that did not mean everything beneath the tender, pink new growth had healed. With wounds this deep, even he would take a while to recover.

Perhaps Madara’s only concern lay with the wounds he inflicted upon Hashirama himself. Had he always been so cruel? Hashirama recalled a man with a fiery temper, but not one so vindictive, so intent on placing blame and cutting away all the softness of what they’d once shared.

“I didn’t give up on you until you threatened everyone that I had to protect. But you are right, Madara. We were not equals. Not in the end. You gave in to hatred, and so did I. I wanted it to end. And if it meant ending you, that was the price I was prepared to pay. Is that what you need to hear?”

What did it matter now…Madara’s death had not released him from his hatred. He was no more the friend Hashirama mourned than he’d been during their battle at the valley. This wasn’t a ghost. This was nothing but a poison shadow, wearing a dear face.

“Is this how you protect them? You go to war and die on your knees? You have changed. Just not in the way you think. You lost everything I admired in you long before you stabbed me in the back.”

Madara glared into the red heart of the fire. If he stared long enough, maybe the truth would look back at him. Tobirama’s jutsu wasn’t complete. He could feel it. Past his paper skin, underneath his indestructible flesh, an anger burned. It was all-consuming.

Even before, he couldn’t remember staying angry this long, this furiously, when Hashirama was bleeding out in front of him. Not even their final fight had been like this.

He was an incomplete thing. He’d died an angry thing and he’d come back the same. Perhaps his anger was as endless as this un-life.

“Maybe I should do you a favor and just find you a sword. Cut your own heart out, Hashirama. Make it permanent. Then we can finally stop disappointing each other.”

What was this bitter, fiery heat in the pit of his shredded stomach? Hashirama spat out bile and blood as he sat up. He wasn’t healed yet, but he was more alive than minutes ago. Maybe thanks to his healing abilities. Or maybe it was spite, because right now, he felt an unusual surge of contempt fight up through the hollow emptiness that had ruled his heart for years now.

A wild urge to wrap his hands around Madara’s throat was barely skimming the surface of this new, terrible anger. Madara’s words once stirred hopes and dreams. Now, they brought to light the worst of Hashirama. Maybe he had it backwards; maybe he’d always made Hashirama worse.

If Madara thought so little of him, why was he even here? Why had he allowed Tobirama to pull him from whatever hell of an afterlife he must have been chained to? Madara’s soul was far too powerful to be bound by conventional rules. There must have been an element of willing in him, no matter how small.

“Why did you save me? If you’re strong enough to defy Tobirama’s jutsu to this degree…you could have let them kill me. Why, Madara? And for both our sakes, tell me the truth.”

He glanced over his shoulder. The light caught in his dead eyes. Looking at Hashirama’s broken body, he was struck by a bolt of sorrow. Grief for what they lost, what they could have been. Grief for what had once been called us.

“Is it that hard to believe that I don’t want you to die?”

He looked away from him. “Or maybe I do. I can’t tell anymore. Even when I hate you, I still love you.”

“It’s hard to tell with everything you’ve…”

Hashirama’s words failed him for a moment as his brain caught up with his ears. How long had he missed that kind of confession? Even if it came five years too late and wrapped in bitter anger.

He breathed deeply. It hurt like hell. He supposed that’s how he knew he was still, regretfully, alive.

“You say one thing, then another. You offer me death and escape, then you keep me from it.”

Hashirama closed his eyes, tired of the dry throbbing pain behind them.

“Will you deny me even this bit of peace?”

“Life was never as simple as you thought it was. Sometimes we get none of the things we want and that’s just how it is.”

Madara listened to the ugly rattle in Hashirama’s breathing. He wanted to continue to ignore him. Another shaky rattle. His determination broke. He turned and grabbed him to pull him closer to the dry heat of the fire, and instead of throwing him down again, he put his head on his lap.

It was like being slapped by the past. Phantom pain pulsed inside his chest. How many days had they spent like this, with Hashirama resting his aching head on Madara’s lap? How many sunsets had they watched together like this?

He ran his fingers through Hashirama’s hair. It was filthy, sticky with blood, and stunk of sweat. He didn’t mind.

“Does it surprise you? I still love you. Unfair, isn’t it?”

Hashirama wasn’t in the sort of shape where he could deny the comforts of being held or touched like this.

And even if he was, he wouldn’t want to. It felt too easy to just allow it to happen, to pretend Madara’s touch was a balm when it should be poison.

“Stop saying it.” It wasn’t helping either of them, was it? This love of theirs had been the ruinous downfall of their dream. It had given Hashirama blind faith in a man he should have questioned, observed, kept under control for his own good. Instead? He’d trusted in Madara to come to him and consult him about the future. Foolish. Naive. Just the way Madara always described him.

“I don’t deserve it.”

“I know you don’t. That’s why I am angry.” But the way he loved wasn’t reasonable. It didn’t stop even when Madara wanted it to. He’d still loved him even as his sword slid through his heart. That was just how the world played out.

“And you, Hashirama? Should everything that happened tell me that you still love me?” It should’ve been a hopeful sentence. It only came out bitter.

“There’s no right answer to that question, is there?” If he confessed love, it would only serve as fuel for Madara’s vindictive anger, reminding Hashirama over and over of something he could never forget. Yes, he loved Madara. Yes, he killed Madara. There was nothing he could do about it now.

All Hashirama wanted right now was rest and quiet. Clearly, his plan had been a poor one. A war had not been enough to give him the peace of death, and there was the matter of Tobirama’s desperation. The sheer level of it, to have summoned Madara of all departed people, it spoke volumes. And most importantly, it told Hashirama that even after thirty-five years, Tobirama wasn’t ready to be without him.

He couldn’t die yet, then. His tired attempt at useful death had failed. He’d have to go on a little longer. 

“I will never love anyone as I love you. For better or for worse.”

Madara looked down at him and smiled. It wasn’t a pleasant one. “You’ll never find someone else like me,” he said to him. His hair slipped onto Hashirama’s chest. “I made sure of that.”

He stroked his cheek. There was a little more life in him now. Even if he was attacked, Hashirama would survive. He didn’t need Madara now.

“There’s a new light in your eyes. Has your will to live finally come back?”

“I…am understanding that I have been selfish and unkind.” Towards his own little brother, no less. Tobirama really must have been at the end of his rope if he sent Madara from the grave to collect Hashirama.

What horrible pain Tobirama must feel…Hashirama could choke on the guilt boiling through his ravaged body.

“I thought I could leave, and meet you once again. But now I know,” he reached up, brushed a hand over Madara’s cold, coarse hair, “I am still needed. My little brother…I made him a promise once.”

The jealousy was an old, familiar companion to him. Madara didn’t even need to think about it to remember it. His smile became sardonic. “Always thinking of him first. That part of you hasn’t changed.”

He cupped Hashirama’s cheek. “But he wasn’t enough to keep you alive last time. Will it be enough now?”

“Seeing you…it puts my negligence into perspective.” Hashirama watched Madara, really looked at every little part of him. He’d not seen his face since he buried the man. And even like this, with ugly cracks in his skin and death in his eyes, he was everything Hashirama wanted. A painful reminder of what he’d lost.

“You always gave everything for your brothers. I should follow that example of yours, and not abandon mine.”

“Look where that got me.”

Madara’s voice grew darker but his touch remained gentle. He slowly pushed the hair out of Hashirama’s face, tugging strands free where they stuck to the skin in bloody clumps. When he was done, he gently touched a long gash on his cheek. It was already scabbed over. It’d be gone within the hour.

“Have you missed me?”

“Does a forest miss a wildfire?” 

Hashirama didn’t feel like conceding any more truths, but they fell from his lips regardless. And the answer to that question was complicated, yet very simple. He did miss Madara, even though he knew he shouldn’t miss something and someone who caused such destruction.

“The forest needs to burn sometimes. Or how else will it grow?” Madara bent his knees, bringing Hashirama’s head a little closer. “And you know how I feel.”

What was the thing he used to say? There’s no world in which I don’t love you? Something like that. Hashirama’s embarrassing behavior sometimes inspired it in him too – made him say these things in bursts when his heart overfilled and demanded expression. Was it even possible for him to stop? He didn’t know. He wanted to think that yes, there was a point in which he could stop loving this man. The other option was just too pathetic to consider.

He bent until their faces were inches apart.

“So will you miss me when I go?”

“I always miss you. Since the day you left the village, I miss you.” Hashirama could offer him nothing but raw, naked truth. It didn’t matter what he said, his and Madara’s time, it was over. But maybe now, in death, Madara could linger long enough to listen and believe Hashirama’s words, instead of being too eager to turn his back and walk away.

“I hope you’ll find some peace. I never could convince you that there was some to be found in life.” 

Perhaps death was kinder to Madara. Or perhaps it had stripped him of his mad plans. Either way, Hashirama had already done his gruesome duty to the world.

He smirked. Then he kissed him. Hashirama tasted like blood, like dirt. He could feel the buzz of his overworked chakra underneath his skin. Madara ran his fingers through his hair, then cradled his head. 

“You said you wanted to go where I went,” he murmured against his mouth. “But that’s not possible. Do you believe in hell, Hashirama?”

“We’ve lived through hell,” Hashirama muttered, the taste of Madara still on his lips, behind blood and bile and filth. Deathly, cold, oddly like paper that had been stored for too long. It was no longer the vibrant heat of Madara’s life that burned within him.

“But tell me what you mean.” While he still could. Who knew how long Tobirama’s jutsu would hold?

“Hell exists. Not the one here…” He pointed down, his smirk growing bitter. “The one there.”

Hashirama wouldn’t end up there, he was sure of it. It just felt wrong for a man like him to be there, no matter how much blood was on his hands. No. Hashirama would pass on elsewhere.

“So even when you die, we won’t see each other again. So if you think we’ll reunite in the Pure Lands…” he brushed his lips over Hashirama’s bloody cheek, “… then you will be very, very disappointed.”

“…So I will never see you again?” It seemed too cruel a punishment. Hashirama had found hollow comfort in the notion of death, until now, always assuming that he’d at least be reunited with Madara for the rest of their existence, in whatever world. But to know that even beyond death, they were not to be…

He reached up, wrapped a hand around Madara’s cold wrist.

“It can’t be. I can’t accept that.”

“It was good while it lasted.” He curled their fingers together, Hashirama’s hot palm warming him. “Remember that.”

His skin began to peel. The thin vein of cracks across his cheeks webbed out, racing down his jaw and past his neck. Madara squeezed his hand. His gaze was steady.

“Do me a favor. Keep living.”

“What choice have you left me with?” there was no bite to Hashirama’s words. He watched Madara crumble, a vivid, unnecessary reminder that this odd respite had come at some price. 

He was not forgiven, and he was not bound to reunite with Madara. Really, he couldn’t imagine how this could be any worse. And yet, there was a glimpse, beneath the ugly, hollow anger in Madara, that remained familiar.

“This isn’t goodbye forever, my friend. We will meet again.” No matter what. Even if Tobirama had to repeat his jutsu. Hashirama had a taste of something long lost, and once he was in one piece again, he might dare reach out for that bit of selfishness. He would live for his brother. And Madara. 

“I would like that.” He didn’t hold out much hope for it but it was nice to dream, wasn’t it? He kissed Hashirama’s battered knuckles. His body continued to break down, the cracks growing wider, and a thin film of dissipating chakra began to rise from his skin.

“The second time around isn’t so bad,” he murmured, his eyes slowly sliding shut. His skin grew duller. His hair paled. Madara sighed as his body dissolved into fine, papery ash, watching Hashirama until his eyes disappeared. “This time, I can see your face…”


End file.
